Words of honour
THE Prince of Wales has lent his support to keeping the Honresfield Library Collection in the country
(‘Keeping it in the family’, Town & Country, May 26), with a sizeable donation to Friends of the National Libraries (FNL), which hopes to raise £15 million for the purchase and allocate the works to libraries around the country, and an article in the Daily Mail ; so far, £7.5 million has been raised.
The collection, which was withdrawn from a Sotheby’s auction in July, includes treasures such as the handwritten manuscript of The Lay of the Last Minstrel by Sir Walter Scott (above), Robert Burns’s draft of Auld Lang Syne, Jane Austen’s letters, some unexamined Brontë sister notebooks and letters, and 31 ‘lost’ poems by Emily Brontë, annotated by Charlotte.
‘Formed by two brothers, William and Alfred Law, Lancashire mill owners in the 19th century, [the collection] sheds light on the kind of industrialist that the popular imagination marked as philistine,’ says the Bodleian’s Richard Ovenden. ‘In fact they were avid, sophisticated readers, purchasing not only standard editions, but graduating to manuscripts and rare editions.’
‘For anyone who has ever been moved by the words of these incomparable artists, the idea of reading these manuscripts is thrilling beyond words,’ writes The Prince of Wales. ‘For the same reason, the idea of them being lost to this country is too awful to contemplate.’
‘Once in a generation, a collection of books and manuscripts appears from almost nowhere that is met with a mixture of awe and stunned silence followed by concerted action to bring it into public ownership,’ adds John Scally, FNL trustee and chief executive of the National Library of Scotland. ‘The Uk-wide consortium is determined to raise the funds to ensure we can save the Honresfield Library.’ Visit www. fnl.org.uk for further information.